The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1887-08-04
EDUCATIONAL.
EDUCATION THE
THING.
Industrial Education in the School
House.
National Republican,

All over the country we find the cry
for "industrial education" in the
schools, and most particularly in the
public schools, which are paid for by
the peoples money. There is grea,
reason for this. The boys and girls
of the country are not taught, as they
should be, that labor dignifes men
and women-that it is the primal law
of nature that every animate thing on
earth must labor in some way or other,
and there is growing demand that
labor should be practically taught in
the schools.
There have been and are now 4
number of industrial schools, such as
the Cooper Union Trade Schools,
Technical Institute, and others of that
class, which may be regarded as the
colleges and universities of industrial
education, but the demand is for the
educational foundation which precedes
the college course, and which gives to
the child not only the desire for hon
orable labor, but trains its mind, and
also trains its hands so that it can be-
come proficient and skillful in what
ever branch of manual labor it NAV
select as life work.
As the schools are now conducted
the child is taught that knowledge OBJ
tanned from books is all that is valua-
bic to it, and this necessarily leads the
immature mind to look upon manual
labor as degrading and unworthy any
one who has acquired knowledge from
books. And this is not all the evil
wrought, for, while the mind is led
astray, the hands are left in ignorance
of what they can do.
Every one of the advanced grades
of the public schools should teach
manual labor. OF course we do not
propose to say that the boys and girls
should be indiscrlminately set to work
at ditching or well-digging, but the
tools Ct the craftsman should be pro-
vided and the boys learned the use OF
them. Each boy would select those
to which his mind had an inclination,
and when the selection was made an
hour or two hours labor each day
should be regularly required.
This would probably lessen the
number of studies and SO much the
better. The differential calculus and
the knowledge of how Xenophon con-
Quoted his retreat from Persia might
not be acquired before the youth left
the school house, but he would know,
instead of these, how to frame a build
ing, make a stairway, plaster house,
lay brick WALL. set this article in
type, or some one of hundred other
things through which he could make
an honorable living and provide for a
comfortable old age.
And the girls should be taught to
sew and knit and cook and do all the
other work that is required of a
woman, besides which they could be
instructed in the lighter arts of labor
SO that they, too, when they left the
school room, would be ready for any
career that fortune or fate placed be
fore them. They might not be SC
proficient in algebra or be able to jab-
Der in bad French, but they would be
better prepared for the battle of life
Books do not contain all the knowl
edge of the world, nor can al! the
people of the United States become
professional men and women. The
supply Of these now more than equals
the demand, and the public school
system in all our cities and towns i:
gradually but surely engrafting upon
the minds of our youth the false idea
that manual labor is degrading to tht
educated man or woman, and yet the
truth is that they are capable, because
of their education of performing thi:
labor better than any one else.